1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a refining method and refining facility for oil that efficiently recover oil products such as gasoline, kerosene, gas turbine fuel or the like, in addition to high value-added refined oils for feedstocks for petrochemistry by upgrading the crude oil, ultra heavy crude oil, bottom oil, or the like.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, there has been a tendency for the global demand for oil products to decrease and the demand for electrical power to increase. Against this background, the desire to flexibly produce feedstock for fluid catalytic cracking (FCC), feedstock for hydrocracking (HCR), and gas turbine power generating fuel (GTF) from ultra heavy oil and vacuum bottom oil thereof is increasing.
However, generally in the case of refining high added-value oil products from ultra heavy crude oils such as Orinoco oil, first it must be fractioned into vacuum residue (VR) and distillate oil by a vacuum distillation process. The obtained vacuum residue is charged in a coker and subject to thermal cracking. Subsequently diene is processed by hydrogenation, then the refined oil is recovered to the extent possible by carrying out hydrodesulfurization (HDS) and hydrodenitrogenation (HDN) processes.
In contrast, the distillate oil obtained by the vacuum distillation process may be subject to a HDS process in a separate hydrogenation apparatus, but depending on the case, in order to further hydrogenation refine an inferior quality thermally cracked oil, a part of the thermally cracked oil must be subject to HDS process along with the distillate oil.
In recent years, there has been an excess of supply in the market for the bottoms of the coker (coke), and the construction of cokers that produce coke as a by-product has started to be restricted. Therefore, although an inexpensive apparatus that does not produce coke as a by-product is desired, presently the situation is that there is no such apparatus.
In addition, in processes used to upgrade ultra heavy crude oil that incorporate a coker, it is necessary to carry out complex hydrogenation (hydrogenation for incorporating diene, HDS, and HDN) of low quality thermally cracked oil and hydrorefining of the distillate oil, and thus the structure of the apparatus becomes complex. Thus, a method of recovering the refined oil using a simple apparatus is desired.
In consideration of the above, it is an object of the present invention to provide a refining method for oil that can flexibly produce oil products by a simple process without using a coker, and a refining facility suitable for implementing this method.